I note that the apostolic succession of the Anglican Church is still unrecognized. Thus, presbyters/bishops would have to be reordained.

The offer really makes few substantial changes other than to make official policy what has previously been practiced with regard to Anglican congregations wishing to join the Roman Catholic Church.

Unlike jbc and Sty, I do not view this as a good thing, given that there are valid options (such as the ACNA).

TBG

I appreciate both of your input. A few years ago, I had a conversation with someone here on NarniaWeb (maybe more than one person) regarding my thoughts that there may indeed be an 'Anglican Rite' in the making. Although that isn't official, I can see things heading that way. I do see that as a good thing for Christianity. It shows an openness by the Catholic Church regarding some prior sticking points which were obstacles to rejoining (such as married priesthood within the Anglican branch), but also helps strengthen Christianity as a whole as it looks to spread the Gospel message with a more unified voice.

I disagree with your view TBG. I can understand your opposition to the Catholic Church as you do not view it as I do. However, what you are advocating is to have Anglicans split over there differences and have the more traditional Anglicans join the ACNA. All this does is continue the spiral of fractionalism within Protestantism. Wouldn't a better alternative (if joining with Catholicism is considered a poor option) be to reconcile the differences that exist within Anglicanism and unite under a common umbrella of beliefs and practices? If that's not possible, I wonder if Protestants will ever be able to share a common table of communion.

I guess my take on the ACNA is that the ECUSA is beyond saving at this point and therefore a split is a good and necessary thing. As it is, the ACNA is providing a framework for Anglicans who had split off earlier to rejoin. I was delighted when I found out that the Reformed Episcopal Church, which split off in the 1870s, was going to be a founding member of the ACNA. Division is sometimes necessary, especially when the liberals have control.

TBG

Actually the apostolic sucession thing is a bit more complex than it has been in the past. I'm by no means an expert but some of the priests and bishops in the TAC and other portions of Anglicanism have Orthodox lines of sucession in there from what I'm told...that could make matters a bit more complex.

JBC

I don't have much to say on the Anglican/Catholic "merger" of sorts. But it seems ironic that after the RCC's pedophile priests scandal, they would allow conservative Anglicans, who presumably don't like the gay clergy problem [among other things], to join with them.

Mods: I know homosexuality is a banned topic and I won't discuss it. I just thought of this the other day and found it ironic.

EDIT
After talking with a NW friend, I realize it's important conservatives stick together. But I think the RCC's response to the gay clergy issue has been a bit different from the Anglicans' [and other Protestant denominations]. I also think the RCC and Anglican church have too many theological differences for a merger to work. Doesn't this seem like another counter-reformation, almost a reversal of 1517?

I was thinking of the discussion, early in this thread, about communion with the saints and [versus?] a personal relationship with Christ. And I came across this sermon by A. W. Tozer [posted by an FB friend]. It's called "The Saint Must Walk Alone."

Most of the world's great souls have been lonely. Loneliness seems to be one price the saint must pay for his saintliness.

In the morning of the world (or should we say, in that strange darkness that came soon after the dawn of man's creation), that pious soul, Enoch, walked with God and was not, for God took him; and while it is not stated in so many words, a fair inference is that Enoch walked a path quite apart from his contemporaries.

Another lonely man was Noah who, of all the antediluvians, found grace in the sight of God; and every shred of evidence points to the aloneness of his life even while surrounded by his people.

Again, Abraham had Sarah and Lot, as well as many servants and herdsmen, but who can read his story and the apostolic comment upon it without sensing instantly that he was a man "whose soul was alike a star and dwelt apart"? As far as we know not one word did God ever speak to him in the company of men. Face down he communed with his God, and the innate dignity of the man forbade that he assume this posture in the presence of others. How sweet and solemn was the scene that night of the sacrifice when he saw the lamps of fire moving between the pieces of offering. There, alone with a horror of great darkness upon him, he heard the voice of God and knew that he was a man marked for divine favor.

Moses also was a man apart. While yet attached to the court of Pharaoh he took long walks alone, and during one of these walks while far removed from the crowds he saw an Egyptian and a Hebrew fighting and came to the rescue of his countryman. After the resultant break with Egypt he dwelt in almost complete seclusion in the desert. There, while he watched his sheep alone, the wonder of the burning bush appeared to him, and later on the peak of Sinai he crouched alone to gaze in fascinated awe at the Presence, partly hidden, partly disclosed, within the cloud and fire.

The prophets of pre-Christian times differed widely from each other, but one mark they bore in common was their enforced loneliness. They loved their people and gloried in the religion of the fathers, but their loyalty to the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and their zeal for the welfare of the nation of Israel drove them away from the crowd and into long periods of heaviness. "I am become a stranger unto my brethren, and an alien unto my mother's children," cried one and unwittingly spoke for all the rest.

Most revealing of all is the sight of that One of whom Moses and all the prophets did write, treading His lonely way to the cross. His deep loneliness was unrelieved by the presence of the multitudes.

'Tis midnight, and on Olive's brow
The star is dimmed that lately shone;
'Tis midnight; in the garden now,
The suffering Savior prays alone.

'Tis midnight, and from all removed
The Savior wrestles lone with fears;
E'en the disciple whom He loved
Heeds not his Master's grief and tears.
- William B. Tappan

He died alone in the darkness hidden from the sight of mortal man and no one saw Him when He arose triumphant and walked out of the tomb, though many saw Him afterward and bore witness to what they saw. There are some things too sacred for any eye but God's to look upon. The curiosity, the clamor, the well-meant but blundering effort to help can only hinder the waiting soul and make unlikely if not impossible the communication of the secret message of God to the worshiping heart.

Sometimes we react by a kind of religious reflex and repeat dutifully the proper words and phrases even though they fail to express our real feelings and lack the authenticity of personal experience. Right now is such a time. A certain conventional loyalty may lead some who hear this unfamiliar truth expressed for the first time to say brightly, "Oh, I am never lonely. Christ said, `I will never leave you nor forsake you,' and `Lo, I am with you alway.' How can I be lonely when Jesus is with me?"

Now I do not want to reflect on the sincerity of any Christian soul, but this stock testimony is too neat to be real. It is obviously what the speaker thinks should be true rather than what he has proved to be true by the test of experience. This cheerful denial of loneliness proves only that the speaker has never walked with God without the support and encouragement afforded him by society. The sense of companionship which he mistakenly attributes to the presence of Christ may and probably does arise from the presence of friendly people. Always remember: you cannot carry a cross in company. Though a man were surrounded by a vast crowd, his cross is his alone and his carrying of it marks him as a man apart. Society has turned against him; otherwise he would have no cross. No one is a friend to the man with a cross. "They all forsook Him, and fled."

The pain of loneliness arises from the constitution of our nature. God made us for each other. The desire for human companionship is completely natural and right. The loneliness of the Christian results from his walk with God in an ungodly world, a walk that must often take him away from the fellowship of good Christians as well as from that of the unregenerate world. His God-given instincts cry out for companionship with others of his kind, others who can understand his longings, his aspirations, his absorption in the love of Christ; and because within his circle of friends there are so few who share inner experiences, he is forced to walk alone. The unsatisfied longings of the prophets for human understanding caused them to cry out in their complaint, and even our Lord Himself suffered in the same way.

The man who has passed on into the divine Presence in actual inner experience will not find many who understand him. A certain amount of social fellowship will of course be his as he mingles with religious persons in the regular activities of the church, but true spiritual fellowship will be hard to find. But he should not expect things to be otherwise. After all he is a stranger and a pilgrim, and the journey he takes is not on his feet but in his heart. He walks with God in the garden of his own soul - and who but God can walk there with him? He is of another spirit from the multitudes that tread the courts of the Lord's house. He has seen that of which they have only heard, and he walks among them somewhat as Zacharias walked after his return from the altar when the people whispered, "He has seen a vision."

The truly spiritual man is indeed something of an oddity. He lives not for himself but to promote the interests of Another. He seeks to persuade people to give all to his Lord and asks no portion or share for himself. He delights not to be honored but to see his Savior glorified in the eyes of men. His joy is to see his Lord promoted and himself neglected. He finds few who care to talk about that which is the supreme object of his interest, so he is often silent and preoccupied in the midst of noisy religious shoptalk. For this he earns the reputation of being dull and over serious, so he is avoided and the gulf between him and society widens. He searches for friends upon whose garments he can detect the smell of myrrh and aloes and cassia out of the ivory palaces, and finding few or none, he, like Mary of old, keeps these things in his heart.

It is this very loneliness that throws him back upon God. "When my father and my mother forsake me, then the Lord will take me up." His inability to find human companionship drives him to seek in God what he can find nowhere else. He learns in inner solitude what he could not have learned in the crowd - that Christ is All in All, that He is made unto us wisdom, righteousness, sanctification and redemption, that in Him we have and possess life's summum bonum.

Two things remain to be said. One, that the lonely man of whom we speak is not a haughty man, nor is he the holier-than-thou, austere saint so bitterly satirized in popular literature. He is likely to feel that he is the least of all men and is sure to blame himself for his very loneliness. He wants to share his feelings with others and to open his heart to some like-minded soul who will understand him, but the spiritual climate around him does not encourage it, so he remains silent and tells his griefs to God alone.

The second thing is that the lonely saint is not the withdrawn man who hardens himself against human suffering and spends his days contemplating the heavens. Just the opposite is true. His loneliness makes him sympathetic to the approach of the broken hearted and the fallen and the sin-bruised. Because he is detached from the world, he is all the more able to help it. Meister Eckhart taught his followers that if they should find themselves in prayer and happen to remember that a poor widow needed food, they should break off the prayer instantly and go care for the widow. "God will not suffer you to lose anything by it," he told them. "You can take up again in prayer where you left off and the Lord will make it up to you." This is typical of the great mystics and masters of the interior life from Paul to the present day.

The weakness of so many modern Christians is that they feel too much at home in the world. In their effort to achieve restful "adjustment" to unregenerate society they have lost their pilgrim character and become an essential part of the very moral order against which they are sent to protest. The world recognizes them and accepts them for what they are. And this is the saddest thing that can be said about them. They are not lonely, but neither are they saints.

/EDIT

Mods: I know homosexuality is a banned topic and I won't discuss it. I just thought of this the other day and found it ironic.

Banned means banned. Please don't bring it up at all; that is what banned means. Any further posts that mention (not just "discuss") homosexuality, gay clergy, etc. will be deleted. Thanks.

The isssue of the new comment by the Roman Catholic leadership regarding Anglicans is more complex than anyone from one country can understand, unless they have studied church history pertaining to the Anglican traditions.

What Americans see, what English people see, and what people in other countries with sizeable Anglican congregations see, will vary a lot.

You could look at it in terms of controversial moral issues. You could look at it in terms of worship styles, leadership and authority, theology [where there can be many differences], the sacraments, and then of course there's ordination, etc.

I think the people who will be most pleased with this approach from the RC leadership are people who are called "Anglo-Catholic"; many come from a long history of Anglican Christians who would have been RC all along if hadn't been firstly illegal, then disapproved of or looked down on.
Some of them are clergy, some lay members.
But it has been possible for people to take the step from Anglo Catholic to RC membership for a long time now, and many HAVE chosen to change, both clergy and laity; perhaps it is going to be easier, or maybe it's just being better advertised! I haven't worked out what is supposed to have changed.

It is very unwise to start anticipating a "Merger" between the RC church and a major Protestant denomination.

Once again, here's little me speaking from a largely ignorant standpoint...but am I the only one who finds all this jockying for denominational names a little...silly? I mean, it just seems to me, being on the outside of it all, that all these little schisms in the Christian faith, the need to write up official statements of what each little group believes and the like, is very petty in the long run.

I'm not trying to be offensive or snide, it's just that whenever I hear about this denomination deciding people with such and such opinion can't belong to them anymore, or such other denomination changing their belief statement I feel like it trivializes the faith itself, and makes it an earthbound political entity instead of a spiritual entity.

Maybe I'm just odd...

May I ask what, exactly, is so offensive about actually defining what the denomination believes? If truth is at stake, I suggest that it is definitely worth defining what that truth is. Division has been present in Christianity since the early centuries--no getting around it. However, we do have to define what it is that we believe, or else we are lost. I would rather be part of a smaller body that knows what it believes than a larger body that pretends that external unity is a substitute for doctrinal unity.

Just what is to unite us, if not doctrine?

By the way, I view "non-denominational" churches as being part of the problem.

TBG

I'm with TBG on that point. I think it vital to know what you believe...otherwise unity is just a wishy washy, or feeling based experience rather than being based on truth.

JBC

I have to disagree on your last remark TBG. I have been in non-denominational churches for most of my life. For 4-5 years, I was in a Christian Reformed Church. Before that, I was in a non-denomination church and I am currently in one. In terms of unity, the denominations are more the problem than the non-denominational ones. Allow me to explain.

I have seen many denominational church do absolutley nothing if it involves doing something that is outside thier circle. How often do you see Baptists do a joint activity with RC's, or Christian Reformed, or Methodists,etc? It doesn't happen often. I often see a reluctance to see cross-denominational activity. Not only that, I often see these ministries view the harvest in a competitive view, instead of a teamwork view. Non-denominationals churches can breach that barrier. The reason the church I go to is denominational has to do with the mission of the church. My pastor was raised Baptist with a Pentacostal preacher grandmother. He considered making my church (we are in our 8th year of existence) Baptist or Petacostal, but the mission of Restoration Fellowship is to restore, refresh and rebuild. He felt if the church was go denominational, he would be limiting the reach of the church to that denomination. So the church decided to go non-denominational so the church could reach out the entire community without those other pressures that denominations offer.

Another example of a successful non-denominational church body in Intervarsity. IV tends to consider themselves interdenominational, but I see little difference between inter- and non-. IV is one of the largest organizations in the world that not denomination specific that I am aware of. And they are solid on thier Biblical foundations.

One of my favorite things to see is different ministries coming together for a joint effort. But to be honest, you won't see it happen across denominations very often. The only time I have ever seen cross-denominational efforts is on my college campus for Holy Week. That is the only time the four college Christian ministries (Intervarsity, Baptist Student Ministries, Catholic Campus Ministries, and the Wesleyan Foundations) come together to reach the campus leading up to Easter. I really wish we'd do something more often. But even during this event, it is usually the BSM and IV that are doing stuff together. CCM and the Wesleyans tend to thier own thing coinciding with the activities during the week.

If non-denominational churches are part of the problem to doctrinal and persona unity, how much more the denominational ones? In fact, the very word 'denomination' has a meaning of dividing. If churches really are to unite, the denominational churches need to expand thier view beyond thier circle. The non-denominationals must also not exclude the denominations. Both groups must look outside the church and not just inside. And all the churches regardless of denomination MUST preach the Word. No church can thrive spiritually without a regular preaching and teaching from the Bible. If two churches that have no denominational relationship both preach the Bible, they can get along because they both serve the same God, same Jesus, same Spirit. So yes, doctrine is a cricital part of the solution for the lack of unity, but if anyone is truly following the Bible, they can look past the denomination's name and have a good, solid relationship with someone else.

Okay, I don't have a problem with one church not being in unity about all beliefs as compared to another church. After all were all on a journey and one church may not be as far on it as another. Another thing I believe is that as the body of Christ the "ears" may not agree with the "eyes" on how to accomplish something but as long as they are both working towards the same goal the minor differences of opinion is of little matter.

Fencer,

What you just described is not unique to denominational churches. I have seen plenty of non-denominational churches that had little direct interaction with each other while the local Episcopal and Presbyterian pastors met for coffee on a regular basis.

Denominations are also helpful for things like mission work. My denomination (the Presbyterian Church in America) has its own missions agency, which interacts on a global level with bodies around the world. Our sister denomination, the Orthodox Presbyterian Church, also has sister churches in many countries.

A problem with many cross-denominational organizations is that they are short on doctrine, which means that long-term biblical faithfulness is nearly impossible. One hundred years ago, the YMCA and Salvation Army were doing wonderful work bringing people to faith. Today, those organizations are little more than run-of-the-mill charities, with no purpose and no mission--theological liberalism is the death of Christian witness.

TBG

So if I read you right TBG your saying that cross-denominational organizations are keeping a loose creed so as to make room for "everyone" and consequentially living a more shallow life.

If that IS what you are saying it makes perfect sense to me. As Christians our lives need to be governed not by what people think but by what God thinks. I confess I'm still working on that one.

So we have opposite experiences with both sides. I am not surprised at this. Yes, the denominations do have larger resources for missions, but I have also seen them only accept thier own. The Christian Reformed Church I went to for a few years is a great church, but they were quite reluctant to buy into what my family and I were doing. At the time we were thier 'token' missionaries at a church that was pretty self-serving. God used us to wake them up and now they have thier own missionaries. But they had an opportunity to have a neat partnership with a solid missions organization and I felt a denominational barrier preventing it. I am not saying that they should have joined up with what we were doing, because God has different people doing different things. But the denominational barrier tends to block potential joint efforts, even for one-time events.

But one thing we both agree on, without solid Scriptural doctrine, unity across the denominations is more harmful than helpful. No church should join together with another church or organization that does not have a Scriptural foundations. This is how the Gospel gets watered down and defeats the message and purpose of the mission. I fully agree with you that we should not forsake Scripture for the sake of unity. I am saying unity should be able to stretch beyond denominational barriers as long as the Scriptural foundation remains intact.

Now it is clear that different denominations have some differences, not only in style of praise and worship, but also in way of dress, approach to culture and more. I've seen super conservatives to the other end of the spectrum, mostly coming through mission teams that the organization my parents work for. These groups were able to look past their background, observe other styles, other cultures, and cross that barrier. I see the denominational barrier quite similar to a language barrier. Quite often the heart is the same and interestingly enough, sometimes it takes a non-denominational entity to act as a translator between the two sides. Not always, but this is something I have observed.

Again, none this is truly possible, nor should it be attempted without solid Biblical teaching. It is through the Gospel that we have unity and without it, we lose it, even if we think we have it. I too have seen the demise of solid Biblically based organizations when they rely on works and leave the foundation of the Gospel. It's sad and the only hope is returning to the roots that made them successful in the first place. I advocate for various ministries joining forces, seeing the harvest as teamwork instead of competition, while maintaining solid Biblical cores. This goes for any church or organization, denominational or not.